


Breaking away from what was done

by Meg (EliaAlice)



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, LadiesofPOI, Suicide Attempt, and suicidal thoughts for that matter, but not enough for me to tag her, mentions of Martine, same goes for Finch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 01:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3832687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliaAlice/pseuds/Meg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything ends with her parents' death. Everything starts again when she finds Samaritan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking away from what was done

**Author's Note:**

> This is a take on Claire's backstory from what we learned about her in 'Nautilus'. Written for ladiesofpoi - prompt : "end".
> 
> The title and the lyrics you'll find at some point in the story are from the song Walking In The Sun (Lena Katina), which I kept listening to while writing this.

Claire has just finished laying the table when the phone rings loudly in the house, almost making her jump. She frowns as she picks up the phone. It's Thanksgiving, she doesn't expect any calls and neither do her parents – talking about her parents, they're running late, she notices as she glances at her watch.

"Yes ?" she simply asks, somewhat coldly. She's not particularly fond of being disturbed by God-knows-who during Thanksgiving.

"Claire Mahoney ?"

Claire tenses up immediately. The voice, a female one, is soft. Too soft. Way too soft. A shiver runs down her spine and she feels cold all of a sudden.

"That's me", she answers slowly, warily.

"My name is detective Conner. I'm sorry to have to tell you that one the phone, Claire, but your parents have been in an accident about an hour ago. They're –"

"Dead", Claire whispers the fateful word at the same time the detective does, having figured out as much from the beginning of the sentence. She lets her arm fall back down by her side, the phone escaping her hand and landing loudly on the floor. She can't hear it though, her ears buzz and it feels like the world has gone deaf. A distant voice comes out of the phone, growing more and more worried with each second that passes, but the detective's voice is heard by nothing but the void.

Claire lets herself glide down the wall next to her, her eyes unfocused and staring somewhere in front of her. Unblinking. She has a hard time breathing ; it feels like a lump as big as the world has formed in her throat. She doesn't notice that either. The only thing her brain can process is the last word that made it to her conscience.

Her parents are dead.

A part of her screams that it's not possible, not real, but she knows better than to believe it.

Her eyes stay dry as seconds tick on her watch and she eventually registers that fact, understanding she's in a state of shock. Forgetting that thought as soon as it appeared.

Her parents are dead.

She can almost hear her world crumbling around her, as if it was made of glass and a bullet had pierced through it. Right to her heart.

One word, one bullet.

A death that has no meaning, that makes no sense. She's only 18. Her parents shouldn't be dead. Not so soon. Not leaving her alone. All alone.

The thoughts swirl in her head now, snatches of sentences that leave her trembling and she wishes the void she feels inside would just swallow her whole.

 

She has no idea how long she stays like this, still against the wall, until she regains enough perceptions of the outside world to hear the voice still coming from the phone. She grabs it absent-mindedly with a shaking hand and tries to focus on what that detective whose name she can't remember is trying to say.

"Claire ? Claire, can you hear me ?"

She hates the worry that fills the words, knows she'll hate the pity she's going to read in everyone's eyes in the next few days, if not weeks, even more. It angers her somehow, and that anger is enough to push back the feeling of falling down the rabbit's hole for a moment. Her hand grips the phone more firmly and she stops shaking.

"Yes. I heard you." Her voice is devoid of any emotion.

"Claire", the detective sighs in relief. "Do you have anyone who could come stay with you to–" she begins, but the end of her sentence gets lost in the beeping of the phone. Claire has disconnected the phone without further ado, unwilling to listen any longer to that voice she's come to hate in only a few minutes.

She gets up eventually and replaces the phone on its base carelessly. A look at the table she set for nothing causes her breath to catch in her throat and the first tears, burning hot, finally escape her eyes.

She cries herself to sleep in her room, wondering how she's going to survive the end of her world.

* * *

 

She misses class the next day. No one blames her. She spends the weekend writing her parents' eulogy, filling pages after pages with words and tears, typing on her keyboard with the rage of a survivor, refusing to stop before she's written something that fully levels with who her parents were. It leaves her raw and exhausted, head aching from the lack of sleep and the tears spilt.

She stands up straight at her parents' burial the next Monday, feeling like she tired out all the tears in her body during the weekend. Like she'll never cry again in her life. She wishes there weren't so many people here, so many people looking at her with the pity that she was expecting and that she hates as much as she thought she would. She puts every ounce of herself in her delivery of her parents' eulogy and by the time she's done, almost everyone has tears running down their faces. Not her, though. Taking breaths hurts and her heart feels like each beating pulls it closer to breaking out of her chest, but her eyes stay dry.

She's never felt as alone in her life as when her parents' coffins are lowered into the ground.

* * *

 

Claire misses school regularly – more than regularly – in the next few weeks. She also stops playing chess, to the great despair of several people she used to play with. She doesn't care. Her interest in everything she used to live for died with her parents. Their disappearance put a definite end to her old life – more like to her young life, she remarks to herself more often than not, hating the irony of the expression.

Her parents' death has no meaning, she learned when she hacked into the computer system of the police to read the report written about the accident. A collision at an intersection, three people killed instantly – her parents and the old man in the other car –, no one left to tell whose fault it was. Not that it would have brought them back. And with their death that didn't have a meaning, her own life lost all of it too. No meaning, no purpose, she's left with nothing but the feeling of being a walking shell walking the surface of a planet where she doesn't think she belongs. Not anymore.

She walks aimlessly in parks covered in snow when she skips class, wandering alone like the loner she is, hidden behind several layers to protect herself from the biting cold. Thinking for hours on end, trying to find some meaning back – meaning behind her life, purpose for her future. She can't find any of it, though, and wonders why she's even still trying.

She gets summoned to the principal's office for the third time at the beginning of January. Claire sighs as she walks through the door, knowing full well what to expect – the same thing than the two times before. She wasn't far from the truth : pity, exhortation to see a psychologist to help her get through "this though period" (she wants to laugh at that, tell him how far away from the truth he is, but the sympathy she loathes isn't worth having to explain herself any further), and all the usual sentences starting by "I understand" when he obviously doesn't understand anything. She's only half-listening to him, lost in her thoughts as usual. The last part, an addition to the usual speech, eventually catches her attention.

"You have an incredibly brilliant mind, Claire. I'm sure your parents wouldn't want to see you waste your talents because of their death", he says softly. Claire stiffens at the words, hating how everyone lately seems to want to talk for her parents when they have no right to.

The words slowly make their way through her mind, and she understands something fundamental : you can't waste something that doesn't exist. She's been looking for meaning in her life for weeks, even though she already knew she wouldn't find any. So maybe it's time to let go.

The principal is looking at her expectantly, waiting for an answer. Instead of the platitudes she got away with the last two times, she chooses to say something else. Her way to thank him for making her understand where she belongs now, where she should be.

"You're right. Wasting my time on questions that don't have an answer is a shame. I promise I'm going to do something about that. Thank you, Sir."

And just like that she's out of the room, leaving the principal alone and dumbfounded.

* * *

 

She closes the door with negligence when she gets back home, and heads straight for the bathroom. Her mother suffered from insomnia a few years ago, and Claire hopes to find her sleeping pills in the small cupboard above the sink. She finds them in it as she expected, not having touched any of her parents' belongings since the accident, and barely hesitates for a split second before grabbing the box firmly. Her decision is made.

If life has no meaning, then she shouldn't be wasting any more of it trying to find one that doesn't exist. And if life has no purpose, there's no reason to move forward with it. It's time to end this. She feels tired, so tired, and so much older than she should for such a young age.

She heads back to the corridor and walks towards her bedroom, passing by her parents' one on her way. She stops a few feet farther and turns around, watching the door she hasn't opened since that fateful day. November 28th, 2013. The date is written in her mind as if it had been engraved there with a red-hot iron.

Claire pulls the door open, slowly, and enters with reverence. She walks carefully, as if the room itself was so fragile that it could crumble at any moment, and sits on the bed. In this moment, it feels like a much better choice that her own. She removes her shoes and lays face down in the middle of the bed with her arms stretched out wide, as if trying to embrace everything her parents were. She stays in this position for so long that she loses track of the time, more at peace that she's felt in weeks. She turns around eventually, resting the back of her head against the pillows, and starts swallowing the pills, one after the other. It feels oddly right to do it here, in her parents' room, as if she was closing a loop by taking her own life in the place they could never go back to.

She swallows the rest of the pills more rapidly once she feels that the void is starting to pull at her, and gives herself up to the welcome oblivion washing over her.

All of a sudden there's a familiar sound somewhere, but she's shrouded in darkness before her numb mind has had any chance to analyze it.

* * *

 

She wakes up in a hospital room, totally disoriented. There's a nurse at her side before she can gather her thoughts enough to remember how the hell she ended up here, checking her vitals and apparently talking to her – Claire can see her lips moving, but the sounds don't quite reach her ears yet. She blinks several times, blinded by the bright light in the room.

The nurse moves out of her field of vision and it gives Claire several seconds to force her mind to answer to her, but much to her dismay, everything is blurry in her head.

Someone else is bent over her now, their head partially hiding the lights – she's thankful for that much –, and this time she manages to process the words she hears.

"Hello, miss Mahoney. I'm going to flash a light to your eyes to see how your pupils respond. Do you understand me ?"

"Y– yes", she stutters with a coated tongue.

Her eyes register the light that is indeed flashed at them and _this_ wasn't necessary, she groans in her head. The doctor straightens back up, letting the bright light of the hospital room free to blind Claire once more. She narrows her eyes and tries to lift a hand to shield herself from it. Still not fully conscious, it takes her several seconds to realize that it's not her body that refuses to answer her : it's simply that both her wrists are handcuffed to the bed.

"What the hell ?" she whispers as she he pulls at her restrains with more and more force.

"Miss Mahoney, please calm down."

"Not until you explain me what this is exactly", Claire spits back at the doctor, fury at the back of her eyes as she stares at him.

"Do you remember how you got here and why ?" he asks instead.

"I – No", she admits, though she's trying to now that the adrenaline is waking her up a lot faster.

"A friend of yours thankfully found you right after you ingested a full box of sleeping pills", he says softly.

 _I don't have any friends_ , she has the time to think right before memories flow back to her mind, hitting her on full force.

"Oh. Yes. I suppose that explains the handcuffs", she eventually rolls her eyes and sighs as she lets her head fall back. She closes her eyes to escape the brightness of the room.

* * *

 

She's out of the hospital as soon as she's cleared by the doctors – she's 18 after all, old enough to make her own decisions, and that means they can't force her to see a psychologist even though they insisted. She ignores them, just like everyone else before.

She gets the full story of her transfer to the hospital before she leaves, once she's annoyed the nurse enough : the principal of her college had asked one of the other students in her class to bring her the latest lessons and homework after their meeting, partly to check on her at the same time. Said student – Claire didn't remember her name, and honestly couldn't care less – had found the front door open after having knocked several times, and then _thankfully_ (as the nurse said, though Claire didn't know what there was to be thankful for) searched for her to finally see her lying motionlessly on the bed. The _poor girl_ , as the nurse kept calling her, had freaked out but still called an ambulance, resulting in Claire having her stomach pumped once she had arrived at the hospital. Which, honestly, annoys her more than anything else.

She isn't particularly happy to still be alive, but she doesn't feel like trying to attempt suicide again either. She has simply stopped caring, living resignedly to see one day after the other.

She doesn't go back to college for the whole semester. It's best for her, she tells the principal in an email she writes him, and apparently he agrees with that fact. So she spends her time online instead, sometimes hacking some small companies to occupy herself – and because she needs some money – but mostly playing video games, sinking into the dark web and talking on message boards. It lasts for months and she fully, consciously agrees with losing herself to that virtual existence. It's better than whatever is left for her in the real world anyway ; it's how she chooses to survive.

* * *

 

Claire goes back to college in September but she doesn't care all that much, spending her time there on the Internet on her laptop more than listening to the teacher. She doesn't really need to listen to get the highest grades anyway.

She's in class on September 28th, 2014 when she notices a strange picture of a Nautilus shell with an abstruse caption on one of the message boards she usually spends time in. Intrigued, she saves it and opens it, racking her brain for almost an hour before she manages to extract the data hidden in the image : instructions to hack into the encrypted network of a private military corporation, and a clue which most certainly leads to another riddle.

It's some sort of a game, she guesses, a twisted game that looks like a weird treasure hunt but she's willing to play anyway. It's the first time something truly piques Claire's interest in a very long time, so she plunges herself headlong into it. It doesn't matter if she has to break some, okay, a lot of rules along the way – it's even enticing, like waking up after months of sleep. It's feeling something again after months of dullness, like a spark of life in her mind.

She skips school again, not that she really gives a damn about that. She flies from Ohio to New York, because that's where the GPS coordinates she finds are, checks in into a motel and decides she's going to be the one to win this game. She doesn't see an alternate ending, apart maybe with her death – but she's careful about that, buying herself a gun for protection. She knows there are other people playing, people far more ruthless than her, and getting killed now that she has something to look forward to would be a cruel irony that she's not willing to experience.

She realizes quite fast that whoever set up such a large-scale game, with occurrences all around the world, has to be powerful. Immensely powerful. Winning the game would give her access to them, or rather it – because as incredible as it seems, Claire soon suspects that it must be an entity rather than a person. And she won't lose that opportunity.

An opportunity to find meaning again, if not for her parents' death then at least for her life. Maybe she could even find a purpose, she starts to dare hope.

* * *

 

Claire climbs the steps of the Octagon building eagerly, feeling increasingly excited by the minute. She can feel how close to winning she is, and adrenaline is coursing through her veins. She doesn't care what the man who spent his time running after her during the last day – she can't remember his name already, if he ever even gave it to her – said about this game. She only remembers that he basically confirmed her that she'll find an entity rather than a someone at the end of the road.

She's close to finding meaning, so close. She won't let anything or anyone take that back from her. No matter which fine words this man had for her, no matter what she could be walking into right now – she doesn't care. She's willing to take all the risks in the world for what she could find by finishing the game.

She stops in front of a sign reading "Roof access : watch your step", and it takes her mere seconds to figure out the word hidden behind the colored letters W-T-C-H-Y-S : "swytch", for "switch". She doesn't waste a second and resumes running up the steps, as fast as she can, heading to the roof. For a second, Claire wonders what her 16-year-old-chessmaster self would have thought about all of this. About guns, Nautilus shells and jumping head first into the unknown. She chases the thought away almost as soon as it came, though. The past is in the past now, and she firmly intends for it to stay this way. The past ended when she found the image online. Today she starts a new life, one that she hopes will have meaning again.

Lyrics of a song she used to listen to before her parents' death without understanding its true meaning comes back to her, and she marvels at how right they feel now.

 

_Yesterday was killing me_  
_Taking me down_  
_Holding my heart to the floor_  
_Tearing me, twisting me over but now  
_ _I’m stepping out that door_

_Today I’ll be walking in the sun_  
_Running from everyone_  
_Breaking away from what was done_  
_Running from everyone_  
_Yesterday is over_  
_Tomorrow’s rain might come_  
_But today I’ll be walking  
_ _Walking in the sun_

 

She opens the door of the roof with the feeling of walking in the sun indeed, even if the night has fallen over the city by now.

"Hello ?" she calls before she notices the Nautilus on the old phone box.

Rendered breathless by the excitation, she stares at the switch at its side, saying the word softly as if she herself couldn't believe she had made it to the end of the game. She swallows before pulling at it, not knowing what to expect exactly but incapable of waiting any longer.

'Nothing' is really the last thing she had imagined.

She wonders if someone else already made it here, pulling the switch before her. She doesn't want to believe it. It can't end here, like this. It simply can't. As a last resort, she opens the box to find a severed wire in front of her.

"It doesn't work ?!" she breathes out, feeling everything swirl out of control again. Her fingers tangle in the mess that is her hair and she feels on the verge of crying. (She hasn't shed a tear since she wrote her parents' eulogy.)

"Give us the file."

Claire turns around, finds herself in front of a machine gun. Way to go from bad to worse, she thinks, although it doesn't matter that much now. She spots two other guys armed the same way, placed on strategic points of the roof. She knows she has no escape route. Fighting back the tears, Claire tries her last option, even if she has no doubt about the answer.

"If I do, will you let me go ?"

"If I said yes, would you believe me ?"

No, she's not that stupid. She glances at the other armed men again, then takes one last look at the severed wire. She finds peace in herself, somehow. Everything has lost any meaning it ever had. So maybe this was where she was supposed to be all along.

"It doesn't matter", she says, shaking her head repeatedly without even noticing. "This whole thing… I guess it didn't mean anything after all." _And maybe nothing means anything, maybe nothing ever did_ , she adds for herself. It's like she has accepted her fate through these words, like she has accepted that she has lost everything once more. She lets the bag fall from her shoulder and starts handing it to the nameless guy who's going to put a bullet in her head in a matter of seconds, resigned.

She gasps when he's hit by a bullet, and frankly jumps when the two other guys get shot the same way. She looks around, trying to make sense out of all of this, but she can't see anything. _Sniper_ , the part of her brain that is still working tells her.

Something vibrates in the box and Claire gasps once more, opening the lower part that was still closed. She grabs a phone and looks at it, frowning. The words 'I will protect you now' appear on the screen, causing her to take a deep breath that turns into a small chuckle, helping her evacuate all the tension and the fear. She starts shivering into the cold air, but she doesn't care.

Life has meaning again after all.

* * *

 

It's only later, when that woman who said her name was Martine walks her into a building, that she realizes something important. The game has ended, but something much more exciting has now started. Maybe ends don't really exist, she thinks. Maybe they're just –

Her thoughts are interrupted by an old man with grey hair who smiles at her as he welcomes her and introduces himself. Claire shakes his hand, excitation dancing in her pupils as she takes in the impressive room she's in, with its big screen and the monitors right in front of her.

"Welcome to this team, Claire. I'm quite sure you will find everything you need here to let your… Impressible abilities blossom."

He has an impressive charisma, she notices. There's also this expression on his face, warm and making her at ease. This place feels like her new home already.

"Thank you", Claire answers honestly, before following Martine who is opening a door and motioning for her to follow.

"Oh and, Claire ?" he calls back after her just before she reaches the threshold. She turns around, looking at him questioningly. "Congratulations, for winning that game. No matter the country, there are never a lot of people who make it to the end."

She smiles, and it's the most truthful smile that has flashed across her face since her parents' accident.

"There's no such thing as an end, Mr Greer. Only new beginnings. I learned that today", she offers before following Martine out of the room.

"Quite the asset you picked up here", Greer says out loud once Claire can't hear him anymore, a chuckle escaping his throat.

'Indeed', the screen in front of him simply displays.

* * *

 

Martine left her in what is now her new room for less than a minute when Claire's phone buzzes. 'I know the answer to the question', the screen displays and she frowns.

"Which question ?"

'Whose fault it is', Samaritan clarifies – Samaritan, her new protector, the AI who brought meaning back to her life.

Claire feels her heart race and her breath catches in her throat. She finds herself unable to answer.

'Do you wish to see the footage ?'

"Yes", she swallows hard. "Please."

The TV in her room switches on and she recognizes her parents' car. Her fists are clenched so tightly that her nails dig into her skin.

"It's not a traffic cam", she whispers, surprised, more to herself than to Samaritan. Her phone buzzes once more anyway.

'This is taken from the web camera of a computer in a cyber café. The police didn't think about checking them out during the investigation.'

She nods silently and watches the screen as another car crashes into her parents' one, causing Claire to startle and close her eyes tightly. Tears are running down her cheeks but, this time, she knows it will really be the last time they do.

'The other driver was over the speed limit and saw the light turning red too late. Black ice and snow prevented him from breaking down properly.' There's a pause of several seconds, as if Samaritan was letting her digest the information. 'It was not your parents' fault', the screen reads again, emphasizing the conclusion Claire had already come to herself.

"Thank you", she whispers, and she can't help but mentally edit what she said to Greer minutes earlier.

There's no such thing as an end, indeed, but only as long as you're alive.

And she plans on staying so.


End file.
